


Epiphany

by redscudery



Series: Off-Kilter [7]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Boys Kissing, Drunk John, Kilts, M/M, Stag Nights & Bachelor Parties, Storytelling
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-24
Updated: 2014-01-24
Packaged: 2018-01-09 20:22:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,081
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1150403
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/redscudery/pseuds/redscudery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which John’s gift to Sherlock is a story. What really happened in Edinburgh?</p><p>Part 7 of "Off-Kilter"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Epiphany

**Author's Note:**

> Perhaps this should go in the first part of the series, but this is compliant with ASiP, then departs for an AU in which John and Sherlock are together almost right away. Thus, the wedding in TSo3 never happens, and this is the first Sherlock’s heard about Sholto.

On January 6th, Sherlock comes down the stairs and criticizes John’s sweater. 

“John, are you actually wearing Mrs. Hudson’s Christmas gift? She outdid herself, you know; it’s the most hideous thing I’ve ever seen.” Sherlock runs his hands over it, and John leans into him. 

“It is. Even I don’t like it. Ah, well. It’ll make her happy to see me wear it.” 

“She’s not coming up, is she?”

“She will want to wish you a happy birthday.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes. 

“I have a gift for you.” 

“A birthday gift? Really, John? So pedestrian.” Sherlock lets go of John and paces over to his desk. John’s mouth twitches, but he knows better than to smile, because he knows what’s coming. 

“Show it to me.”

“I can’t.”

“But I want to deduce it.”

John smirks. Sherlock has never correctly guessed a wrapped gift from John yet, but he will never admit that he needs to practice.

“It’s not wrapped.”

Sherlock doesn’t actually pout, but his lower lip does start to stick out a bit. On principle, John bites it. Sherlock licks him. A short and undignified tussle ensues, but John lets Sherlock take control of the kiss because, after all, he’s three for three in the surprise gift department, and that piques Sherlock’s ego. 

Sherlock continues kissing John just long enough to make his point. 

“Better?”

“Much. Now, the gift, John.”

“So bossy, but I forgive you. Mostly on account of your beautiful arse.” And his curls, and his face, and his Sherlock-ness, but that goes unsaid. 

“Am I just an object to you?” Sherlock’s mock-dramatic sigh is very gusty and petulant.

“Were you an object, you’d be much less annoying. Now do you want your present or not?”

A green glare is all the answer John gets.

“All right, then. My gift to you is a story.”

“Edinburgh! Wait!” Sherlock leaps up and runs from the room. John, nonplussed, watches him go. 

When Sherlock comes back, he’s got the kilt in his hand.

“I think you should wear this. It will add realism.”

“It’s not realism you want to add to this scenario, Sherlock Holmes.”

Sherlock grins a wolfish grin. 

“Put it on and start talking.”

“Magic word?”

“Kilt.”

“Very funny.”

Sherlock tosses the kilt to John, flings himself back down on the couch and raises his eyebrows. John gives resistance up as a bad job. Really, the kilt could count as wrapping, if the point were stretched just a little, so he buckles it on and whisks down his trousers, tossing them over Sherlock’s chair. 

“The pants too.” Sherlock isn’t even looking at him now. John makes a little face and pulls them down.

“Where would you like me to sit, then, since you’re taking charge?”

Sherlock rolls over and pats the couch, and John plumps down, the kilt flipping up around his thighs. Sherlock leans into him and bites his ear.

“Do you want to hear this or not?”

“No use protesting, John. You’re going to tell me now that you’ve said you will, so I can do what I like.”

“It’s not exactly the most erotic story in the world, you know, unless you get off on drunken embarassment.”

“The story is about you, is it not? Ergo, it will be erotic.”

“Flattery will get you…whatever you were going to get in the first place.”

“Enough persiflage. Proceed.”

“You’re a fine one to talk.” 

Sherlock stares pointedly at the ceiling. John sighs.

“I was on leave, my last leave, not long before I was injured. I wasn’t sure I wanted to go, but Robert Gilchrist was getting married in Edinburgh. He’d been invalided out three months before, and they’d moved the wedding up, don’t know why. I wasn’t in any frame of mind to go, but he asked our former commander and me to be groomsmen and I couldn’t refuse. We had lost two men in the time he’d been out, and he needed us to be there. 

“The stag night was a bit of a disaster from start to finish. The maid of honour was the overzealous type, and she insisted on dressing Rob up- in a kilt, of course-and providing him with an inflatable sheep to carry. Cringe-inducing; you have no idea.”

“That inflatable sheep are mass-produced is cringe-inducing enough, frankly. Go on.”

“So once Rob was in this awful getup, she gave us some awful shots called, unfortunately, kilt-lifters-stop sniggering- and sent us out. She made us take two each, and I don’t know what was in them, but we were tipsy by the time we were four blocks from the hotel.”

“Lightweights.” 

“That’s rich, coming from you, Mr. Lemonade. Anyway, as I was saying before I was so rudely interrupted, we arrived at the pub somewhat the worse for wear. We kept drinking, though, because…” John pauses, remembering the raw edge that had never been quite covered up by the laughter and stale jokes about blow jobs and the old ball and chain. 

“It wasn’t really such a happy occasion.” Sherlock’s teasing tone has shifted in response to John’s body language, and John leanes in to him.

“It was pretty awful, actually, and not just because of the ridiculous accoutrements. We were crammed in a corner booth, table covered in pints, and we were talking, the usual blag, you know, but we all knew we weren’t having fun. Not because of the wedding-Rob and Thea were obviously happy-but it just brought back all the guys we knew that weren’t there.

“It got more and more hysterical, you know, and when Rob was propositioned by an American tourist it was still worse. We kept talking about how really, it was just the kilt, he was old, he’d lost his pulling power, etc. Then, I made the mistake of smiling at-

“Flirting with.”

“I said ‘smiling at’ and that’s what I meant.”

“Your ‘smiling’ is everyone else’s ‘flirting’.”

“You are hardly a source of unbiased information in this case.”

Sherlock wrinkles his nose.

“I am always able to preserve my objectivity.”

“Balls.” John leans forward and kisses Sherlock on the nose. “I smiled at the barmaid, and she smiled back and of course I had to do my big man act and try and chat her up, which went over about like you’d expect. There was desperation and sadness pouring off that table, and no sane woman would have gone within ten feet of it.

“But of course the boys ragged on me for it, so I said that if I had Rob’s kilt on I could pull any woman in the place, so…”

“They made you put it on.” Sherlock’s eyebrow goes back up.

“They did.”

“I am heroically restraining myself from imagining them stripping you en masse in the loo.”

“No you’re not.”

“No, I’m not. Details, please.”

“Really, Sherlock? We went into neighbouring stalls and I took off my trousers and handed them to Rob over the wall. He handed me the kilt; I put it on.”

“And your pants?” Sherlock puts a large, warm hand on John’s bare knee. The first two fingers press gently on the sensitive spot just behind the bend in John’s leg; John breathes in with a slight hitch. 

“Sherlock.”

“Your pants.” The hand becomes more insistent, stroking the back of John’s knee.

“I binned them.”

“Oh, John.” Sherlock grins, “I love it when you surprise me.” 

“Says the man that cannot deduce my gifts.”

“Shh. Story. You were pantsless in a pub loo in Edinburgh.” 

“You make it sound so elegant. Thank you. So I went out into the pub…”

“On the pull.” Sherlock can’t help himself. 

“Have you ever even said ‘on the pull’ before?”

“I thought it was the perfect chance to test it.” John would glare, but Sherlock’s silent laugh is too much for him. He reaches out and takes Sherlock by the back of the neck, pulling him in for a kiss, soft and sweet. Sherlock, ever the opportunist, presses closer, biting John’s lower lip and sucking softly. John lets him, then pulls back, reluctantly.

“So soon?” Sherlock’s pout is unconvincing.

“Yes. You can suffer.”

“Very well.” 

“I went to the bar and looked around. Not really many opportunities, but I tried. And tried. And tried. Eventually, they started making me drink every time I failed.

“Nobody wanted me, not even the desperate woman at the end of the bar—there’s always one,this one was youngish, but skin and bones, nervous. It started out okay, but went a bit south when I went to kiss her, burped,”

Sherlock wrinkles his nose. 

“And vomited on the floor by her shoes. So that ended that.” A snort from Sherlock this time, and the tips of John’s ears redden. 

“It gets a bit fluid here; I must have been feeling pretty bad, but I don’t really remember going back to the hotel. I remember thinking I was going to get ribbed for years about that, for not holding my liquor.”

“I have never understood why alcohol consumption is a standard by which masculinity is measured” Sherlock sniffs, a touch of primness around his mouth.

“I like to watch your mouth do that. Makes me want to stick something in it.”

Sherlock’s pupils dilate, as they always do when John is offhandedly crude. His mouth relaxes, but only slightly. 

“Anyway, think of it as who has the highest poison tolerance. Surely you can understand that.”

“Huh. At least I’m not interested in continuously replicating the same experiment, though.”

“Different variables. So I got back to the hotel somehow, and fell asleep.” John stops, turns to Sherlock, looks in his eyes.

“I refuse to believe, John, that this is the end of the story.”

“I never said it was.”

“No, but you’re looking at me in a way that suggests guilt or hesitation.”

“Oh, well spotted.” John’s a little sarcastic, suddenly.

“Well, screw your courage to the sticking-place, John, and tell me.”

“Macbeth? Really? Also, d’you mind not being so bloody grandiloquent while I’m having a crisis of conscience?”

“Crisis of sexuality, more like.”

“No, that I place squarely on your shoulders.”

“My magnificent shoulders.”

“Yes, yes. Magnificent shoulders, arse, mouth, etc.”

“Aaah, insincere flattery.” Sherlock stretches his legs out and tosses his head back, lolling against John’s shoulder. 

“Not insincere,” John says, and puts his hand on Sherlock’s thigh just to reassure him.

“Bits and pieces come back to me about the first part of that walk home. I think we must have gotten lost, wandered around, but I don’t really remember.

“When it started to rain, I remember more; sobering up, I suppose. We stopped in a park for a bit, and sat on a bench.”

“Who’s ‘we’? Sholto, I suppose?”

“Yes.” 

Sherlock’s quiet for a moment. 

“Keep going.”

“We were just sitting there, as you do, me in this ridiculous kilt and Sholto wearing.. I don’t even know, something that wasn’t his uniform, because he looked uncomfortable… and he leaned over towards me. I thought he was going to fall over, so I reached out.

“It was just the wrong moment. His face fell into my hand, and when he looked up at me I saw something in his eyes. By the time I figured out what it was, he was kissing me.”

He expects Sherlock to ask another question, but all he gets is silence.

“I didn’t quite know what to do, but the drink helped, I guess, because I let him. I didn’t want to kiss him, not really, but he wanted to kiss me, and I couldn’t have pushed him away if my life had depended on it. I suspect his life did depend on it, then.

“It went on for a while. It was different, not unpleasant, not exciting. I let him break the kiss, but his expression when he did was…” John breathes in, seeing Sholto’s wrecked face before him, the sadness, the guilt, “upsetting. I didn’t want to do anything else, didn’t want to hurt him.”

“You liked him?”

“We were close. We spent a lot of time together.”

“Close like us?”

“In retrospect, perhaps.”

“Do you miss him?”

“Sherlock, are you jealous?”

“I thought you didn’t like men.”

“I don’t, in that way, usually. But I cared for him, as a fellow soldier and as a person. He was fragile, and I would have destroyed him in pushing him away.”

“Do no harm.”

“Exactly.”

“Then what happened?”

John laughs.

“Then he vomited on my lap.”


End file.
